Final Reflection

Final Reflection

1) I have had to do a lot for this class: interview people, come up with ideas, etc. Many of the things that I did were fun. For instance, I really enjoyed doing the "Bug List", the "Creating a Custom Avatar" and the "Idea Napkin". I liked doing these because they gave me the opportunity to express myself and be imaginative. Take the "Creating a Custom Avatar" assignment for instance. When I did this, I was able to get to know who my customer was and who I should be targeting. By getting to know my customer, I would be able to tailor my product to them. There were also some things that I didn't like doing in this class. One such assignment was the "Elevator Pitches". I hated doing the "Elevator Pitches". I hated doing these assignments because I hate speaking in front of the camera. I don't know why I hate speaking in front of the camera but it definitely made this assignment unbearable to do. Even though I hated this one assignment, I think that the majority of assignments were fun and enjoyable.

2) The idea I had of entrepreneurship was pretty simple. I thought it was all about opening a store and hoping people walk in, but it turns out it is much more than that. This class taught me that entrepreneurs do things like talk to customers, VC's, etc. The one formative experience I had was talking to people about my idea. This gave me insight into what entrepreneurs do in order to create the best idea they can. Also, these assignments really showed me how hard it is to be an entrepreneur. Like I said earlier, I thought entrepreneurship was all about opening a store but there is a lot more that goes into it. The memory that'll stick with me is definitely when I had to create an idea. My idea was all about creating online presences for small businesses. I definitely want to keep this idea in the back of my mind so I can see if it will still create value for people in the future. The most joyous experience I had was when I got to create my idea. I think my idea could help a lot of people. If I can ever create a business centered around this idea, I think that I could help a lot of people and be happy while doing it. The experience I am most proud of is completing the whole class. This class took us through the process of the average entrepreneur. We had to interview customers, develop our ideas, etc. After completing the class, I now have even more respect for those who want to help make the world a better place.

3) I don't consider myself to be an entrepreneur yet. In order to be an entrepreneur, you have to have an entrepreneurial mindset and you have to be actively trying to create value for people. So far, I have come up with an idea and talked to people about the idea, but not much other than that. I do however, think that I have developed an entrepreneurial mindset. This class has given me the knowledge to identify opportunities, told me the steps to take to develop my idea and how to turn my idea into a business. Even though I am not an entrepreneur yet, I can see myself becoming one in the future, thanks to this class.

4) If I were to recommend one thing for a future entrepreneur, I would recommend that they be as outgoing as possible. The majority of the tasks that entrepreneurs do has to do with being social: interviews, meeting with VC's, etc. You can have a great idea, but if you are not outgoing, it'll be hard to tell people about it. One thing I would tell someone who is taking this class is to stay on top of your work. There are about three assignments per week, which doesn't seem like a lot, but they can take up a good bit of your time. It is important to start them early so you don't have to write a whole book report on the day the assignment is due. Finally, the thing I would recommend that people do to develop an entrepreneurial mindset is pay attention to your surroundings. There are opportunities everywhere, and most of them go unnoticed. If you pay attention to your surroundings, you might be able to identify an opportunity and help a lot of people.

EZ Presence's Venture Concept No. 2

EZ Presence' Venture Concept

1) Note: I didn't receive any feedback on my last venture concept so I made changes based on what I have learned in class and from other assignments.

The Opportunity

The opportunity that I identified was that there are many small businesses (approximately 46%) out there that do not have any sort of online presence. An online presence is anything over the internet that draws attention to your business or brand. This means that they rely solely on word of mouth to spread awareness about their business. This also means that they rely solely on face to face interaction in order to sell to customers. Given recent events (the coronavirus and the government restrictions that came along with it), many small business owners are now at risk of having to close down because they can no longer have face to face interactions with customers. All business owners in all states are facing this problem. Even though some states have eased up on restrictions, they are expecting to tighten them up again once Fall and Winter arrive. As of now, customers aren't really satisfying this need. Small business owners are relying on loans and grants to give them enough money to pay their bills during this time. However, that is not a good plan because there is no set end date to this problem. These small business owners could end up taking out tons of loans for the foreseeable future until there is a vaccine and government restrictions lighten up, putting them in large amounts of debt that they will never be able to get out of. I don't think they are "loyal" to taking out tons of loans. I think that every good business person knows that they will have to take out loans every once in a while in order to finance a piece of machinery, a building, etc, but they all know that it is not smart to take out loans in order to pay employees or to pay bills. I think that many small business owners have been forced to do this because they have no other options. I think that this opportunity is pretty big. This coronavirus is affecting small businesses all over the world and many of them could be saved if they had an easy and affordable online presence. I think that this opportunity will be here for the foreseeable future. Let's take the coronavirus out of the equation for a second. Ever since the 1990's, businesses have been using the internet in order to reach customers. Now it's the 2020's and the internet has become a more important part of businesses. Experts say that close to 20% of all retail sales were done over the internet in 2019. Now add the coronavirus, people can now only shop over the internet. In 2020, it is very important to have an online presence so that you can reach and sell to customers.

The Innovation

The innovation I have created is more of a process innovation rather than a product innovation. I plan on creating websites that are on par with competitors(GoDaddy and SquareSpace), but I am going to do it for less money. The way I plan on innovating the process is by hiring independent website designers (mainly college students that are looking for a good side-job), similar to how Uber hires their drivers. This will keep the costs that I incur low. These independent website designers will create websites for a flat $5 fee. This may not seem like a lot but the way my business will make money is through managing their online presence. If they choose to let us manage their online presence, we will charge them $20 a month. 46% of all small businesses don't have an online presence of any kind. If my business were able to reach all 46% of small businesses, we would make $71 million from flat fees alone and $300 million from managing online presences each month. The way my service will work relies primarily on me contacting small businesses and selling my idea to them. Once the small business owner sees that they need an online presence, I will send an independent website designer to them and they will talk to them about what they are looking for in an online presence. The independent website designer will create their online presence and if they would like, they will manage it for them. Small business owners will see how helpful and easy having an online presence is and will wish they had used our service sooner.

The Venture Concept

As previously stated, many small business owners are relying on loans and grants in order to keep their businesses open during this time of tough government restrictions, which is not ideal. However, getting an online presence could make it where they don't need to take out loans or apply for grants. In other words, if small businesses were able to sell to customers over the internet, they could make the money to pay employees, pay their rent, etc. There are other companies that do similar things such as GoDaddy or SquareSpace, but I plan on taking a cost-leadership approach, charging less for the same service. I think small businesses will likely use my service over others because they will get the same product for a lower price. In all honesty,  I think that this is my "Secret Sauce", it will be the thing that gets small businesses to use my service over others. Also, I don't think that it will be that hard to get small businesses to use my service over others because I will be targeting businesses that don't have an online presence. Most small businesses that don't have an online presence don't have one because they can't afford it or they don't have the "know how" to make one themselves, so they would benefit from me doing it for them for a low price. My goal is to help all small businesses attain an online presence because it is a key part to running and expanding a business. As far as what's next for EZ Presence, I hope to continue to grow this business because I feel that it can do a lot of good for small businesses. I want to start off small, helping my local community, then expand slowly. Hopefully, EZ Presence can service all of Florida, 10 years after its creation and all of the Southeast, 25 years after its creation. I think this business/service can do a lot of good, so I want to be a part of it for as long as possible.

2) I actually didn't receive any feedback from my first "Venture Concept" assignment, so I based all of my changes off of the things that I learned from class and from the "What's Next" assignment. Also, most of the changes I made came at the end of my venture concept. One of the changes I made was to my expectation for how quickly my business would grow. In one of the lectures, Dr. Pryor talked about how hard it was and how long it took for businesses to grow, no matter how successful. Another thing that influenced the changes I made was the "What's Next" assignment. The "What's Next" assignment got me to think about my role within the business long-term. Originally, I didn't put much about my role within the organization long-term, but I added that in this post.

3) One of the specific changes I made was increase the amount of time it will take me to expand. I originally said that it would take me about 10 years to expand to the whole Southeast, but I changed that to 25 years. Based on what we learned in class, that is a more realistic growth than what I had put before. The other change I had made was add a part about where I see myself long-term. I added this part because it is important to do. If you plan on staying with the business long-term, your business strategy will be different than if you planned on selling the business shortly after creating it. Those were pretty much all of the major changes that I made to my venture concept.

Reading Reflection No. 3

Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw

1) The book I decided to read was Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw. One of the things that surprised me the most about Andrew Carnegie was that he was the epitome of the "American Dream". Growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you see Carnegie's name everywhere: libraries, schools, etc. However, you never hear about what his life was like before becoming one of the richest businessmen ever. When he was a teenager in Scotland, his father (a handloom weaver) was not making the money that he once did and Scotland was experiencing a food shortage. His family moved to Pennsylvania with the hope that they could have a better life. Like his father, Carnegie was able to create a better life for himself in America than he would have been able to in his home country of Scotland. The thing that I most liked about Carnegie was that he was a risk-taker. He was so much of a risk-taker that his business partner Tom Scott said that he valued "skyrocketing expansion" and that he was a "dangerous leader" because of this trait. One instance that exemplifies this trait was when he invested in the steel industry. At this time, he invested in many industries like oil and railroads, but he foresaw that steel was going to become a "booming industry" and decided to invest all of his money in it. It definitely took "guts" to invest all of your money into one industry instead of spreading the risk around multiple industries. The thing that I least liked about him was that he was a ruthless businessman. He was running a business around the time that unions started to emerge in the United States. At one point, the steelworkers tried to strike and Carnegie didn't want that to happen, so he had the Pinkertons come and "keep the peace". The Pinkertons and the striking workers ended up fighting where 10 people died. This event ended up being known as the Homestead Strike. There are many other things that Carnegie did that made him a ruthless businessman but the Homestead Strike was one of the craziest ones I read about. Carnegie definitely encountered adversity but the one that put him at the biggest disadvantage was being a young immigrant. Being an immigrant sounds like a very hard thing. You don't know anyone, you don't have a job, or anywhere to live. Carnegie wasn't going to be stopped by this. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps and got a job which paid $1.5 a week, $35 when adjusted for inflation. He ended up using the connections he made at that job to identify opportunities and make money. He ended up becoming a millionaire by 35, which just shows you how much of a hard worker he was.

2) The three competencies I noticed him demonstrate were hard work, opportunity identification, and risk-taking. As far as hard work is concerned, I read that he started from the bottom. He worked at the same cotton mill as his father as a bobbin boy. He would make $1.50 a week. He kept switching jobs and moving up the hierarchy until he had enough money to invest in a railroad company. This demonstrates that he was a hard worker and that he would do anything to make money. He was also great at identifying opportunities and taking risks. When he was in Europe, he heard that there was a new development that made making steel easier, this process was the Bessemer Process. He believed that this process was going to revolutionize steel making. He decided that he was going to invest all of his money in the steel industry. This risk, as we know paid off. It is believed that he made close to $7 billion from his investment in the steel industry.

3) One thing that I found confusing was why he would give away money to build schools and libraries but not money to the people who worked for him. I feel like this doesn't really make much sense. You have people who are working 12 hours a day in a steel mill and they are only making a couple of dollars a day, if that. I have a feeling that it has to do with cutting into his profits while philanthropy doesn't. It just doesn't make much sense to treat those who work for you so poorly, but give your money away "willy nilly" to different causes.

4) The two questions I would ask Andrew Carnegie if I could would have to do with his treatment of workers. The first question I would ask would be if he regrets what happened during the Homestead Strike. Like I said, 10 people died during the strike, which can be attributed to Carnegie calling in the Pinkertons. I think that this knowledge would be weight on his mind and I would want to know if he regrets calling the Pinkertons in to "keep the peace". The next question I would ask him is if he thinks that he would be as successful if todays regulations on workers were in place during the 1800's. I think this question is a good one to ask him because it would give more insight into what he thought about workers' rights and it would show us how he thinks of himself as an entrepreneur.

5) I definitely think that he was a fan of hard work. I have said this a million times so far but he worked five jobs before he made an investment in the railroad industry, which made him his first $1 million. He was definitely a hard worker and thought that it was one of the more important competencies associated with entrepreneurial success. I definitely value hard work but probably not to the extent to which he did. Ever since I could work, I have held a job. I think jobs teach you great skills, and increase your human and social capital. Unlike Carnegie, I think that one job at a time is sufficient enough.

Your Exit Strategy

My Strategy

1) I think the thing I plan on doing is to continue growing my business for the foreseeable future. If it is successful, I plan on growing my business and passing it on. Preferably, I would pass it on to someone in my family, but I think I would give it to anyone who would do a good job. Just look at medieval monarchies, one bad ruler can ruin it for everyone. If I pass this company off to a child or someone in my family who doesn't have the ability to run it, there could be many small businesses that suffer because of that choice. I think giving it to a determined and capable person (preferably a child) is what I want to do after retiring from this business.

2) I think that I want to keep working on this business instead of selling it because I think this business could have a huge impact on small business owners lives across the world. How I see this working is that I would start out by helping the local community and then my business' reach would gradually increase. After helping the local community, I would help the state, then the country, and then North America, etc. I see this business doing a lot of good for a lot of people, so I think that I would want to keep working with it until it can help all small businesses across the world or the business fails.

3) I think that this decision has influenced my decisions in regard to growth of the business and its cultural identity. I think that since I am planning on pursuing this long term, it is not as important for the business to grow right at first. I think many people who want to sell the business want it to grow right away so big companies take notice right away and try to acquire them. Like I said, I am trying to stay with my business long-term, so its okay for my business to not grow as much.  As long as my business helps small businesses obtain an online presence and make money, I am happy.  As far as cultural identity, I think that I want to have a family-like feel. I think that I want to have this type of culture because I want people to be there long-term like I will. By having a welcoming and close culture, people will stay with the business long-term.

Closing Statement

My business' mission is to help small businesses obtain an affordable and easy to use online presence. By doing this we can help these small businesses reach customers that they probably wouldn't have otherwise and sell to customers outside of the store. This will prevent many small businesses who are being affected by the coronavirus from closing down. I think that this business could do a lot of good and this is the reason I want to be a part of it for as long as possible.

Celebrating Failure

My Failure

1) The time I failed this Summer that comes to mind is when I attempted to ride my bike down to St. Augustine and back. When I first came home from school because of the coronavirus pandemic, all of the gyms in my area were closed, so I decided to ride my bike in order to get exercise. I would ride my bike everyday and go a little bit further each day. About a month and a half in, I would ride my bike down to Mayport, Florida, which is about a 25 mile round trip. This ride isn't that hard when it is cool outside and the wind is helping. I thought to myself that if I can do this, I can probably ride my bike to St. Augustine, which is about a 60 mile bike ride round trip. I decided that I would "train" for another month and do it then. Fast forward to June, and I am getting ready to start my ride. I do things like check the weather,  put air in my tires, get a bunch of water bottles, etc. It says that it's going to be 90 degrees but that doesn't really bother me because I have been riding my bike in hot weather this whole time. I start my bike ride and I'm doing pretty well until I reach Mickler's Landing. The wind starts pushing against me and the ride gets a lot harder. I'm about a quarter of a way through my ride, and I am drenched head to toe in sweat and I'm tired. I decide to ride back home instead of finishing. There is still a bright side I guess, which is that I got a good workout that day.

2) One thing that I learned from this experience was that preparation is everything. When you plan something big, you need to account for all factors. In my case, it was the wind, the heat, and the training I should have done. As far as training was concerned, I just kept riding to Mayport and back, which is pretty far but not close to how far St. Augustine is though. If I were to redux the training I did, I think that I would have biked further than 25 miles. I think that I would have biked something close to 60 miles so I can get a feel for how long the ride actually is. As far as the heat is concerned, I was riding in slightly cooler weather. Summer in Florida is hot no matter what but May is definitely cooler than June is, like it is a drastic change in how hot it gets. Finally, overcoming the wind is a big challenge. I think that I should have done more resistance training so I could tolerate the times that the wind started to pick up. In all, preparation is everything. If you are not prepared, you are probably going to fail. This applies to business as well. If you don't think of every little thing that your business is going to face, when it hits you, you won't know how to deal with it.

3) I think I can speak for everyone when I say that no one likes to fail. However, it is a necessary thing. Personally, I think that I handle failure and losing pretty well. I can attribute this fact about me to playing sports when I was younger. For instance, I played a lot of baseball when I was younger and in high school. There were games where I struck out twice or missed an easy "pop fly". I would beat myself up about it for the moment, but I realized that it wasn't the end. There were going to be other times that I was going to batting, or when I would be able to make a play. I think it is important that everyone realize that just because you make one mistake, doesn't mean its the end of your baseball career or your business. I think that this class has reaffirmed my belief about failure. It kind of surprised me when Dr. Pryor talked about mistakes being a part of starting a business. I always thought that business was the one place that you couldn't make a mistake, because your livelihood depends on it. However, Dr. Pryor said that you need to make mistakes in order to learn what customers want and to see whether your business creates value. I think that I am more likely to take risks. Taking risks are a part of life and most of the time, you can get a lot of good from taking risks. For instance, going to a VC. You can get a lot of good resources if they like your idea and if they don't, all you get is a "no". Failure and risks are a part of life, which make us better people for experiencing them

What's Next?

Existing Market

1) As of now, my business is concerned with making and managing online presences for small business. I think that the next thing my business should do is try to improve the service that we offer. My original strategy was to undercut other businesses prices and provide a comparable product. Once my business gets started and hits its groove, I want to invest in training for my employees, so that they can get better at creating and managing small businesses' online presence.

2) Note: I didn't see anything about me not interviewing new people, so I interviewed people that I had already talked to because they had a basic understanding of what I was doing. 

a) The first person I interviewed was Jim Rojas, owner of Jim's Dog House and Discount Guns. I originally interviewed him for the "Figuring Out Buyer Behavior" assignment, so he has a basic understanding of what I am trying to do. I asked him what I should do that I am not planning on doing, and what he said surprised me. He said that I should expand into creating "non-online" ways of helping businesses reach customers. He said that there are probably people who aren't good at using the internet and might benefit from having a physical piece of paper in front of them. He said like creating newsletters and things like that to raise awareness for the business. He said that there are probably people who aren't good at using the internet and might benefit from having a physical piece of paper in front of them. Next, I asked him about what he thinks of me trying to improve the quality of the online presences that we will create without raising the price and he said that that was a good idea. He said that people will always want a better quality product as long as it won't cost them any more money.

b) The next person I interviewed was Bruce, the owner of One of Each Gift. Like Jim, I also interviewed him for the "Figuring Out Buyer Behavior" assignment, so he has an understanding of what my business is all about. I asked him what he thinks I should do that I am already not doing, and he said that I should focus on trying to get their websites and things like that to the top of Google, so that when people search for them, they will be directed to their website. I understood what he was saying because whats the point in having an online presence of no one can see it when they search for it. Next I asked him about my idea of trying to improve the quality of the online presence without drastically changing the price. He said that that would be great. He said as a small business owner, price is everything. He said that if he were a customer and he could get a better quality product for a lower price, he would be very satisfied.

c) The final person I interviewed was Dee, the owner of Ellie Bing. Previously, I had interviewed Dee for the second iteration of the "Figuring Out Buyer Behavior" assignment. I asked her what she thinks I should do that I am not planning on doing. She said that I should try to improve the quality of the online presences we create. This was very nice to hear because it shows that someone has the same idea as me as far as what I should do. I told her that I had the same idea and she said that quality is very important. She reminded me that she was upset with how their website turned out, so it was pretty much useless. She said that having a well-made website is very important. I told her about my idea of creating better websites without changing the price of the service and she said the she really liked that idea. Like everyone else, she said that customers would love to have a better quality product without having to change the amount they pay for it.

3) I think that the thing that makes the most sense for my business is to improve the quality of my product. It seems like this direction was liked by all of the people I interviewed. I think the way I need to go about it is by getting the people who create the online presence the necessary training. There are places such as colleges and classes at learning annexes that can teach people how to create website. If I were to send my employees there, they could gain the necessary skills to create better websites, and even be more efficient with their time.

I think that customers would enjoy this because they would be given a much better product for comparable price. I think that I will be able to keep costs down because the training would make my employees more efficient meaning that they could handle more clients than they previously could. Also, the training that I am providing my employees could be considered a form of compensation, so they might be willing to take a slight pay cut in order to get the training. This whole idea stems on the fact that I need to keep costs low, so I can continue to charge customers a low price. 

New Market

1) The new market I am going to be trying to enter is hospitals. With the coronavirus still in full effect, many people might not feel comfortable going to the hospital or the doctors office unless they really need to. With an online presence, doctors could have tele-visits instead of having people come into their office for check-ups.

2) I think that my venture concept fits with this market because hospitals are also being affected by the coronavirus and have a need for my service. Many hospitals and doctors offices are being over run by coronavirus patients, making it where many "healthy" people don't want to go to check-ups because they fear that they will get infected. Doctors are probably not feeling the economic effect that this is causing but they have a responsibility to help all people. If they have the capability to do tele-visits, people would feel more comfortable to see their doctors and doctors would be able to fulfill their duty to help everyone who has a medical need. Also, doctors like small business owners will want to save money wherever they can and I think that they would love to have an affordable and easy online presence to help perform these tele-visits.

3) Note: I didn't see anything about me not interviewing new people, so I interviewed people that I had already talked to because they had a basic understanding of what I was doing.

a) The first person I talked to was my dad, Robert Templin. He is a lawyer at Shands hospital in Jacksonville, Florida and I he has a good understanding of all that goes into obtaining the technology for tele-medicine. He has a good understanding of what my business idea is and thinks that it could be a big help to small private practice doctors, but not big hospital systems. He says that Shands does everything in-house, so they have people whose only job is to manage their online presence and do tele-medicine. He thinks that my best chance at success would be to target small private practices. They don't have the capabilities to do this themselves and would probably jump at the opportunity to get an online presence at an affordable cost.

b) The next person I talked to was my old pediatrician, Dr. Jim Schaffer. He is a doctor with UPMC in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When. I contacted him via email, it was surprising how similar his answer was to my dad's. He told me that he sees this as a good idea for small private practices, because they don't have the capabilities that bigger hospital systems do. He talked about big hospital systems having people do it in-house because it ends up being cheaper than having someone else do it for them. At the end of his email, he talked about small private practices not having these capabilities and that they could benefit from my service.

4) The one thing that I learned was that I might have to narrow my focus. I originally said that I would be able to help all medical professionals, but I will probably only be able to help small private practices. Unlike hospitals and hospital systems, small private practices don't have the capabilities to create and manage their own online presence/tele-medicine system. If I were to expand my business into this market, I think I would have to specifically target private practices. 

Nothing really surprised me, I guess that I knew subconsciously that hospitals probably wouldn't need my service because they already use tele-medicine and have great online presences. I'm happy that I could still help a portion of this market though. I guess that the one assumption that was correct was that there is a need in this market, the group's need is just not as big as I thought. Finally, I think that this market is still attractive, I just need to target small private practices and help them obtain a great online presence so they can reach patients who choose to stay home.

EZ Presence's Venture Concept No. 1

EZ Presence's Venture Concept

The Opportunity

The opportunity that I identified was that there are many small businesses (approximately 46%) out there that do not have any sort of online presence. An online presence is anything over the internet that draws attention to your business or brand. This means that they rely solely on word of mouth to spread awareness about their business. This also means that they rely solely on face to face interaction in order to sell to customers. Given recent events (the coronavirus and the government restrictions that came along with it), many small business owners are now at risk of having to close down because they can no longer have face to face interactions with customers. All business owners in all states are facing this problem. Even though some states have eased up on restrictions, they are expecting to tighten them up again once Fall and Winter arrive. As of now, customers aren't really satisfying this need. Small business owners are relying on loans and grants to give them enough money to pay their bills during this time. However, that is not a good plan because there is no set end date to this problem. These small business owners could end up taking out tons of loans for the foreseeable future until there is a vaccine and government restrictions lighten up, putting them in large amounts of debt that they will never be able to get out of. I don't think they are "loyal" to taking out tons of loans. I think that every good business person knows that they will have to take out loans every once in a while in order to finance a piece of machinery, a building, etc, but they all know that it is not smart to take out loans in order to pay employees or to pay bills. I think that many small business owners have been forced to do this because they have no other options. I think that this opportunity is pretty big. This coronavirus is affecting small businesses all over the world and many of them could be saved if they had an easy and affordable online presence. I think that this opportunity will be here for the foreseeable future. Let's take the coronavirus out of the equation for a second. Ever since the 1990's, businesses have been using the internet in order to reach customers. Now it's the 2020's and the internet has become a more important part of businesses. Experts say that close to 20% of all retail sales were done over the internet in 2019. Now add the coronavirus, people can now only shop over the internet. In 2020, it is very important to have an online presence so that you can reach and sell to customers.

The Innovation

The innovation I have created is more of a process innovation rather than a product innovation. I plan on creating websites that are on par with competitors(GoDaddy and SquareSpace), but I am going to do it for less money. The way I plan on innovating the process is by hiring independent website designers (mainly college students that are looking for a good side-job), similar to how Uber hires their drivers. This will keep the costs that I incur low. These independent website designers will create websites for a flat $5 fee. This may not seem like a lot but the way my business will make money is through managing their online presence. If they choose to let us manage their online presence, we will charge them $20 a month. 46% of all small businesses don't have an online presence of any kind. If my business were able to reach all 46% of small businesses, we would make $71 million from flat fees alone and $300 million from managing online presences each month. The way my service will work relies primarily on me contacting small businesses and selling my idea to them. Once the small business owner sees that they need an online presence, I will send an independent website designer to them and they will talk to them about what they are looking for in an online presence. The independent website designer will create their online presence and if they would like, they will manage it for them. Small business owners will see how helpful and easy having an online presence is and will wish they had used our service sooner.

The Venture Concept

As previously stated, many small business owners are relying on loans and grants to keep their business open during this time of tough government restrictions, which is not ideal. However, getting an online presence could make it where they don't need to take out loans or apply for grants. In other words, if small businesses were able to sell to customers over the internet, they would have the money to pay employees, their rent, etc. There are other companies that do similar things such as GoDaddy and SquareSpace, but I plan on taking a cost-leadership approach, charging less for the same service. I think that people will likely use my service over other services because they will get a comparable product for a lower price. In all honesty, I think that this is my "secret sauce", it'll be the thing that will get them to use my service over others. Also, I don't think that it will be hard to get small businesses to use my service because I will be targeting small businesses that don't have an online presence. My goal is to help all small businesses with attain some sort of online presence, because it is key to expanding and running a successful business. As far as what's next for me, I hope to continue to grow this business and stay in it long term, because it will probably not take off within the first couple of years. I think that it will start in a city and continuously expand over its lifetime. In the five years after my business launches, I hope to be servicing all of the small businesses in Florida and in the next ten years, all of the small businesses in the Southeast. I know I'm getting a head of myself, but I think that this is a service that could help a lot of people.